GoBots Camera

Photos taken by me in the 80's with my Gobots camera.

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Dracula's Castle: the best haunted house ever built.  I miss this place.

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June 1989

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Grandma at the kitchen table smoking out of her Cruella deVille filter, along with Grandpa and Nana.

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June 1988: My mother (right) and grandmother (left) at the Chicago O'Hare airport on our way to Hawaii.

Note the expression of joy on Mom's face upon seeing my camera.

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February 1987: Garbage Pail Kids folder on my grandparent's living room floor.

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Uncle Mix in 1986.

This was my Aunt Ida's husband.  Honestly, I don't remember his real name.  Everybody just called him Mix.  He and Ida hosted large friends and family gatherings in their yard every Sunday when I was a kid.  There was a lot of drinking, gambling and carousing, but there were also a lot of my cousins and other kids to play with.

I remember that I asked if I could take his picture and he responded by striking this pose.  He probably had more than a few bottles of Genesee in his bloodstream at the time.

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1986: My grandparents TV and VCR.

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1986: The ferris wheel at Hershey Park.

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The inside of Dad's 1975 Chevy Impala (photo taken in 1986)

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Grandpa and I used to walk to this Burger King for breakfast on Saturday mornings when I was a kid.  I must have snapped this on the way to breakfast on one such occasion.  Their French Toast sticks were delicious.

Years later, this restaurant became my first job.   I was 15 and I lied about my age in the interview when I was hired.  I got pretty creative at making excuses each time they asked for my working papers from school.  They finally called home and my grandmother told them I was 15 years old.  She didn't really care that I had a job, but she wasn't about to lie for me either.  I was pretty bummed.  I enjoyed working there.

This Burger King closed in the mid 2000's.  The building sat empty for a number of years before it was turned into a daycare center.

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June 1989: This is my grandmother, Joanne Schweitzer, stylin' in her California Raisins sweatshirt at the kitchen table after a day at Knoebels with Grandpa and I.

For those of you who are outside of NEPA, Knoebels is a truly awesome amusement park in the woods of Elysburg, Pennsylvania.  Admission to the park is absolutely free, as it has been since it opened in 1926 (your great-grandmother can come with the family without buying a ticket).  Visitors can buy tickets to ride the rides, each of which are very reasonably priced.  There's a humongous swimming pool, a full miniature golf course, two incredible roller coasters, a full carousel from 1913, a ton of kiddie and adult rides and hands down the best selection and quality of food that you will ever find at an amusement park.

Ok, I got off on a bit of a sidetrack there.  In this photo, you can see the McDonalds Happy Meal box for the Changeables toy series.  Changeables were Transformer-like toys in which food items could be made to turn into robots.  You can see the Big Mac and French Fry toys in the middle of the photo (one on either side of the white thing that looks like an envelope on the table).

There's a few things from Knoebels on the table aside from the bag above the Happy Meal box.  The yellow thing is a plastic jug of lemonade that they used to sell at the park.  To the right of that is a small jar with a penny inside.  I'm positive that they still have those in the gift shop to this day.  There's a couple of plastic toys that I probably won playing Skee-Ball in their arcade, and a few cards from the fortune telling machine that used to be at that arcade.

Also on the table are a few foam animals from one of the Knoebels gift shops.  These were sold as plastic pills; the idea of which was to put them into warm water so that the plastic pill shell dissolves and allows the condensed sponge to take on water.  This causes it to spread out and reveal its surprise shape.  I'm not sure if they still make them anymore.

There's a few other random things that didn't come from the park.  On the far left of the photo is a Tootsie Roll bank, and on the right side of the table is the Tiger LCD Football game that Grandpa is playing in this picture.

It's tough to make out the rest of the items on the table, but considering how blurry it is and the fact that I took this photo 24 years ago, I'd say I did a fairly decent job identifying this stuff.